Craig and I turn up Prospect Street, for my childhood home. It’s our 50th high school reunion, and he’s giving me a tour of Reading while his wife, Jean, is with grandchildren.
We park. The copper beech that was outside my front bedroom window is gone—as is the blue spruce that leaned. The beech had cooled my summer afternoons while I read Nancy Drew with my door closed. It became a dark shape beyond the streetlight as I dressed in pale pink for the Freshman Hop. Inside the broad bedroom window was a wide-bottom rocker that had held my bottom many hours as I went back and forth by the tree that was my friend.
Welcomed by the surprised owner, we had a tour. I found the right words but mulled over the gladness I felt that my parents couldn’t see the changes. The downstairs and upstairs halls and stairwell that had had red floral, Colonial wallpaper, true to the style of the house, now were painted blossom pink.
I found refuge in the attic and basement where little had changed. They still had an old look about them.
Walking the back grassy slope, I pulled together my memories with gratitude for them and for my special opportunity to stand there, fifty years collapsed between my family and the present owner.
A song line came to mind, "You can visit but you can’t go back."* I’d experienced a further loosening from my past with a warm feeling of satisfaction that my time in this home had been right for me and now my life was elsewhere.
My realization is “Every moment we are growing and changing, and the past is no longer our home in time. The present moment is where we are meant to be.”
*You Can Visit But You Can’t Go Back Stephen Michael Camp